Ten is a four letter word - Tuesday 20 January 2009

NCIS may roll over for the cricket, but not for Tennis, the long running Naval procedural was in fine form last night winning it’s two hour span with ease and lifting the rest of Ten tent along with it.

The day on day lift for the rest of Ten’s sked was extroadinary:

Neighbours up 40,000
Friends up 89,000
The Simpsons up 276,000
Rules of Engagement up 261,000

Seven can still be happy with a stellar performance all night long though only taking a 100,000 hit to Home & Away and the Night Session of the Tennis in the face of Ten’s resurgence.

Nine too was doing alright until their 8.30 movie – Paycheck. Not sure what it got but I know it’s under 640,000, they likely clawed back some share late in the night with the start of a marathon inauguration coverage after the movie.

Extra Viewers No Reason - Thursday 15 January 2009

It seems a lot of OzTAM families are back from Holidays...

The only change to the night was move of Sudden Impact to Thursday Night (due to the Tuesday night Cricket)

This paid a dividend for Nine with an extra 100K tuning in, although that could have just reflected the additional numbers tuning into television last night, Eli Stone, Temptation, Seven News, Cold Case, How I Met Your Mother, Secret Millionaire – week on week all of these shows were up by around 100,000 viewers.

The biggest improvers were Today Tonight up Ugly Betty, up 293,000 viewers week on week and Ugly Betty which drew an extra 167,000 viewers for the season finale.

Crowded House - Wednesday 15 January 2009

Sometimes television forces you to choose between three good shows facing off against one another.

It gets interesting when the shows are of a similar genre and the viewers have to make a difficult viewing choice.

There is a truism about television – you don’t want your really big shows to go up against your opposition’s really big shows because you might hurt your own show in the process.

All the same, it’s extremely difficult to knock off strong competition without using a really big show to do it.

Late last year this game of ratings chicken moved to Wednesday nights as Viewers had to chose between long time champion House, high rating freshman Criminal Minds and newcomer Fringe

Viewers decided that House beats Fringe but Criminal Minds beats House

Eventually nine got sick of losing and subbed in fellow newcomer (and the biggest new show in the US) The Mentalist.

Right there in one slot we had three shows which, on their own, are capable of drawing 1.6 million viewers all fighting for the same block of prime time ad space.

Nine’s move with The Mentalist was a blow to the show (it aud going from 1.4 to 1 million) but it repaired their share in that slot and took the edge of timeslot leader Criminal Minds. House meanwhile, as the oldest kid on the block, continued to dwindle as viewers checked out newer, shinier shows.

This summer has seen a continuation of this 3-way jam with House again suffering at the hands of it’s competitors, the timeslot winner has been CSI Miami, which is an older show than House but has spent the last two years with erratic scheduling and a waning audiences – it looks as if people are rediscovering the series, the runner up has been Las Vegas which seems to have a core fanbase willing to see out the series despite it being cancelled in America some time ago.

However last night we got a rare look at the drama pecking order in this country, with House moving to 9.30pm for a second rerun – it audience increased! Seems that people still like the doctor, they just also like the other things that are on, but when it gets to 9.30 and the other options are ER (an aging drama whose entire cast has been replaced) and The Unit (a violent Action/Soap with seemingly limited Aussie appeal) then a rerun of House wins!

There’s still life in the old show yet I guess…

Note to Seven: Hitler is dead - Monday 12 January 2009

Well Monday saw an increase in overall viewers on the previous week, a lot of that was no doubt helped by Ten scheduling something that people wanted to see with the Ashley Judd thriller (one of many Ashley Judd thrillers) Double Jeopardy proving a big switch-on for the net with an almost 100% lift in viewers!

Even the soon to be departed Out of the Blue got a 50% week on week boost beating Scrubs!

Scrubs was a victim of Seven’s idiotic scheduling – removing a proven second hour of Bones for a documentary about Hitler… WTF?? First of all haven’t there been enough documentaries on Hitler? Those in the viewing public wanting their WWII fix are probably already hardcore subscribers to the Hitler, err History Channel.

I’d love to find out (and I guess we will next week) how many watched The Golden Globe Awards, in years past Ten used to draw over a million viewers to the January spectacle – making it a good platform for promotion, but after last year’s writers strike it seems to have fallen into the hands of cable TV, which, although better equipped to telecast it live, has a much smaller audience base.

The Rich List rebounded with no cricket to distract it’s followers and How I Met Your Mother is doing quite nicely – it is probably summer’s top rating sitcom and will no doubt be launching new episodes right out of the gate unlike last years haphazard start.

Flasher at the cricket - Sunday 11 January 2009

That wheezing sound you can hear is the last gasp of test cricket as it struggles for air, deprived of viewers while it’s upstart younger sibling Twenty/20 cricket grabs the limelight.

For those who don’t know already Twenty/20 shrinks the one day 50 over per side cricket match down to a fast 20 overs per side, meaning the whole game can be played out in one evening – perfect for television and spectacle with the play less strategic and more ‘go for broke’

I’m reminded of a quote from an episode of Star Trek the Next Generation where one of the characters laments the demise of Baseball several centuries earlier…

"Once, centuries ago, it was the beloved national pastime of the Americas. Abandoned by a society that prized fast food and faster games. Lost to impatience.”

That quote came to mind when I saw the ratings for last night’s Twenty/20 match – quite different to the middling ratings achieved by the test cricket just a week ago, the difference was – those ratings (because of the timeslot) provided a real benefit to Nine’s News, last night Nine’s News was off the radar and it’s 6.30 showing of The Secret Millionaire (honestly, how many timeslots are they going to trial this in?) was a disaster even being beaten by Ten’s also-ran movie.

Better for Nine though was the opening of Flashpoint which held onto half the cricket’s aud – not bad for a show running through to midnight, I didn’t catch it but judging by the previews it looked like ‘Rush: Toronto’ (or perhaps Rush is ‘Flashpoint: Melbourne’) but this initial turnout bodes well for future airings.

Seven suffered the most by Nine’s cricket dominance with the Rich List taking a dive and their movie being beaten into a close fourth place in the slot.

Ten’s decision to air movies was vindicated – although ‘Aquamarine’ was a non-starter it still did better than last week’s reality double, ‘Die Hard with a Vengance’ however did much better for them, it seems in summer when it comes to showing movies, the back catalogue and name recognition is a better guarantee of good ratings

Crime Pays - Thursday 8 January 2009

Even through summer – the audience for crime drama continues to be strong – witness the figures for the Law & Order reruns and Cold Case, hell even SBS’s Carla Cametti PD pulled an impressive (for them) 457,000 viewers.

Nine, however, has made a terrible misstep this summer with their handling of Cold Case, the show won it’s timeslot against Ten in the first few airings – then someone at Nine had the bright idea to use the timeslot to promote The Secret Millionaire, one of their many lukewarm ideas which they’re trying to push in these “troubled times”

I wonder whether it was worth displacing one of the few shows actually firing for them this summer, since it’s return it has struggled against the more regularly scheduled SVU. Last night was the show’s 6th season premiere and yet it only managed 859,000 – pretty woeful for a new ep of an established rater – thing is though – if you keep moving a show all around the map people will give up and watch something else.

Another case in point was Heroes – I didn’t even know it was on last night, it hasn’t been on for weeks and now it comes back to a 9.30 timeslot after months at 10.30, with next to no promotion, and they wonder why they’re in last. No doubt next week I’ll tune in at 9.30 looking for another episode and instead find “Out of the Question” or some other rubbish.

Grrrrrr.

Physician Heal Thyself - Wednesday 7 January 2009

Not much going on for what is a pretty standard Wednesday at the moment - that is to say - Lacklustre all around.

Two notable points, neither of which make me happy are the failure of Old Christine, losing 200,000 viewers from your lead in (the ordinary 10 to 01) is not a good look.

Even more woeful was the performance of House, to which ten is adding another hour next week - good luck there folks, House looks like it's officially dead - or maybe that's Ten...

Go with what you know - Tuesday 6 January 2009

Reruns and factuals are the order of the day, Tuesday night once again belonged to NCIS with reruns of the veteran drama pulling the best audience post 7.30. Next Week Ten ditches In Plain Sight (which has shown some growth but not enough) in favour of a second hour of NCIS.

For Seven the start of Tennis cannot come soon enough - Eli Stone has been a flop - perhaps if they played it back when they promoted it last year.

Seven's move of more factuals at 7.30 has turned that hour from Nine dominated into a level pegging contest, that this many people in summer, are interested in this sort of television either says a lot about the tastes of the viewing public - or a lot about the lack of any viewing alternatives.

The Arnie flick Collateral Damage did alright for Nine with their Tuesday movie keeping them in the game, perhaps with the take no prisoners opposition of Packed to the Rafters and NCIS, Nine will stick movies on this night as a defensive position, which is frankly - not a bad way to go.

Dem Bones - Monday 5 January 2008

Just a quick one for Monday because there’s not a lot happening, Nine is paying the price post 8.30 for it’s Ten like scheduling, taking out CSI and subbing in The Mentalist on what is that show’s third timeslot thus far, in repeats no less.

In this day and age where people are watching less Free to Air TV than ever – you cannot afford to be moving shows all around the map. Just pick a night an stick with it.

As for Ten – well if you’re following TV at this time of year then you’ll already know that this Monday night line-up is history – replaced by a rerun of Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? (I wonder if Grant Blackley has taken that quiz?) and Movies. Bye Bye models – don’t let the door hit your boney arses on the way out!

Speaking of Bones – that show is in purple patch for Seven – what you’re witnessing right now is new viewers who are just discovering the show and enjoying the reruns – similar to what occurred with Two and a Half Men in 2008.

Based on this information I expect Bones to put in some really big numbers and be somewhat timeslot-proof for seven in 2009.

Ten's Answer = More Tyra - Sunday 4 January 2009

Hey everyone

Even though the networks are still asleep at the wheel it’s time to get back into the fray and bring forth some ratings analysis – the first for this bright shiny new year and what can we see…

Ah yes – people like Cricket! Very good, good stuff people. After some middling ratings for the earlier test outings, Cricket seemed to get it’s game on yesterday with a gargantuan daytime audience of 1.1 million, even The Cricket Show a half hour time filler (they used to play sitcom reruns in that lunch break when I was a kid!) did spectacular business. All of this crickety goodness help Nine News to the No. 1 spot on the ladder last night

Seven News was still impressive though – given it’s lead in was the embarrassingly titled “Does My Bum Look Big?”

Seven got another big shot in with their reality shows, but the Rich List lost 100,000 viewers from lead in Hot Property and while it didn’t do badly (channel ten would kill for that number) – it was not a very confident performance from Seven’s perspective.

Channel Ten is in distress – I’m not sure how they’re keeping the lights on over there this summer because there’s an awful lot of PSA’s taking up commercial breaks on that channel right now which is a sad situation.

Don’t Forget The Lyrics seems to be a show that’s very dependant on it’s lead in, ie: you’re not going to seek this show out, it’s not appointment television the way that you will make a point to catch The Big Bang Theory, rather it’s the kind of show that you’ll watch if its on when you’re watching.

This is bad news if your lead in is the centre of the known universe: Tyra Banks. Tyra’s modelling quest now has less viewers on free to air than it does on Cable (the series’ weekly reach on Foxtel is 831,000 viewers) So what does ten decide to do? Axe the series you say? No – they’re adding another hour! This time 7.30 Mondays to replace the failed How to Look Naked.

Whilst I’m happy they’ve taken out that particular low rater – why replace it with another one. Of course this time tomorrow I could be eating my words and Model could be a big hit back on Mondays – but don’t hold your breath…

Return of the Rant

Television Rant will be cranking up again from Monday Jan 5 with fresh new ratings analysis as my holidays finish and TV starts to get interesting again.

In the meantime feel free to amuse yourself over at my other blog List 22 where I forensically examine 22 of 2008's worst TV disasters.

See you all on Monday!

Brand Power - Wednesday 17 December 2008

A bit of a weird night caused by a test cricket match in Perth which has skewed channel nine’s lineup and it’s figures as a consequence. It would be encouraging to believe that CSI, ER and Gossip Girl all lifted by 109,000 89,000 and 71,000 respectively – and hey it could’ve happened – but we won’t know until they release the adjusted figures next week.

Notwithstanding the performance of it evening lineup Nine’s cricket coverage had the bizarre side-effect of driving regular ACA viewers to Today Tonight – making it the night’s top show!

Clearly all those years of consumer advocacy has taught the viewers to recognise when one brand offers essentially the same features as another and so people had no trouble switching brands for the night. Nine would want to hope it doesn't become a more permanent switch.

That and the performance of How I Met Your Mother was the end of the good news for seven – the rest of their lineup suffering badly at the hands of the cricket – as did ABC whose older male skew doesn’t help on night’s like last night!

Ten was about the same week on week although that’s not saying much.

Sudden Drop - Tuesday 16 December 2008

There was a massive week on week drop in viewership last night.

Nine’s reality double looked hot last week but lost some of it’s sheen last night thanks to reduced overall numbers with about 160,000 less viewers tuning in across the hour.

Everything on Nine dropped week on week by around 100,000 viewers, ABC experienced a slight drop across the night while for seven Eli Stone and Ghost Whisperer both dropped while their 7.30 and 10.30 hours improved.

Seven’s decision to limit Ugly Betty to one night a week in favour of yet more animal flavoured reality has paid a dividend with Wild Vets and Coastwatch both lifting their audience by an average of 70,000 viewers in the slot.

Prison Break improved week on week by 30,000 viewers.

Ten showed slight a slight loss for The Simpsons (down 13,000 viewers) but a slight life for Rules (up 29,000 viewers. Last week Rules’ retention was 83%, last night it was up to 88% which is a good sign.

NCIS improved week on week by 7,000 viewers and In Plain Sight now coming in at a more manageable hour length was up 117,000 viewers retention improved from 51% to 60% an improvement but it will need to improve more over the coming weeks to secure a berth in this slot.

Blame Big Brother - Monday 15 December 2008

You know sometimes networks make weird decisions, the last few weeks channel ten has been in a state of panic worse than a Wall Street broker with all his money tied up with Lehman Bros.

Whatever they try on Mondays it isn’t working.

In the 90s US network CBS had a great slogan “If its Mondays – It must be CBS” well it certainly isn’t Ten. Big Brother has effectively their Monday Nights in 2008.

If we look at the early part of the year Ten were riding high on Mondays with So You Think You Can Dance and Good News Week, this pair of shows were posting healthy figures throughout.

When Dance came to an end in stepped 7 year veteran Big Brother. Big Brother has always been a force on Mondays – the show killed Nine’s Monday comedy hour after Friends departed with the pithy and often exciting Nomination shows both entertaining fans and frustrating others with their constant overruns screwing with their TV viewing.

In 2008 Ten changed the game and came unstuck. In an effort to revamp BB they ditched the traditional Nomination-Elimination structure of the show – for this season viewers would ring to protect their favourites and the three with the lowest votes were up for eviction with the housemates having the final say.

On paper it looks like a refreshing change to the old formula which often proved frustrating for followers of the show when nomination was in the hands of the housemates.

But in practice it removed that vital Monday Nominations a great opportunity to get into the housemates heads and see how they tick, there was also some real suspense involved to see who would be up that week and the previous night’s evictee was invited along for special comments.

In 2008 this was dropped and instead the Daily Show at 7pm was extended to an hour with a new import ‘How to look good naked’ filling out the hour.

It was a ratings disaster and the absence of Nominations was, I believe, one of the factors behind Big Brother’s rapid decline in 2008.

While BB and Carson Kressley were driving viewers away from the resilient Good News Week, the 9.30 show, Big Brother Big Mouth with proven showkiller Tony Squires gave whoever was left at that time a good excuse to try another network.

Thanks to this awful show a lot of people developed new TV habits on a Monday night. One of those habits was Bones over on Seven which was last night the top prime time show!

With Big Brother out of the way Idol came back and after a brief surge of interest for the auditions wrestled with a new hourlong verdict show that dragged on and on bleeding viewers along the way, Good News Week did well enough to keep it’s head above water at 8.30 especially in the face of competing real news over on the ABC with a resurgent 4 Corners.

At 9.30 Ten started playing dangerous games with a low-rated (US Cable) actioner with a very vocal fan base – Burn Notice couldn’t resuscitate Ten’s woeful 9.30 hour, nor could Supernatural a onetime megahit for ten scrounging for 1/3 of its original fanbase despite being fast tracked.

The year ended with Ten trialling the spin-off of 90210 (CW) first at 8.30 then eventually at 7.30. When an 8.30 debuts with less than 700,000 viewers you know the jig is up, Ten had managed to destroy Monday nights.

Now it’s summer and already there’s been 2 schedule changes (one that never made it to air!), first was pulling the planned screening of failed US drama Swingtown replacing it with another failed US drama The Ex List – after two weeks at 9.30 The Ex List was pulled new drama Army Wives moved to it’s slot and a second hour of Law & Order CI added, all the while ignoring the elephant in the room…

Carson Kressley is watchable and after the success of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (well for about a year anyway) Ten could certainly expect a turnout for his new show. Indeed in it’s debut the show did fire pulling 1,227,000 viewers but the numbers quickly fell away after the initial look.

Ten left their line up in place for two weeks, in week one it was clear that the Naked show was struggling against formidable competition at 7.30 but Army Wives lifted at 8.30

The Second week was worse – although Naked grew, Wives dropped from it’s lead in, a disastrous result, although it was the final night for The Howard Years which was significant summer competition. The Ex list fell into no-mans land under 500k – once that happens the plug is pulled.

Which leaves us with last night – Law & Order was brought in to shore up 8.30 – it didn’t do much of a job, perhaps the promotion was insufficient, perhaps people feel they’ve had enough law and enough order without adding a third night, perhaps it’s the third cop show in the timeslot creating a drain on the audience. Whatever the case it didn’t help much and Army Wives moving to 9.30 was a failure itself falling into the under 500k dead zone – will we see it next week?

My advice to Ten, Give Carson the flick and put a nice long movie on, or show a test pattern – can’t do much worse!

Rubbish to the Rescue - Sunday 14 December 2008

If I heard the TV announcer declare that coming up was a romantic comedy starring Greg Kinnear and Ashley Judd I would reach for both the remote and a bucket and use whichever I could grab first, clearly last night a lot more people were closer to a bucket than their remote controls which explains why ‘Someone Like You’ gave the much more entertaining Die Hard 2 a run for it’s money.

Of course there is no explanation as to what possessed Nine to screen National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation 2, the original fine (and it will be played at some stage you can guarantee it) but this offcut of a sequel starring Randy Quaid??

Quaid is at times brilliant, but he’s best in small doses, as a supporting player he can steal the show but if he is ever the star of anything, then run for the hills.

Bizarrely Nine chose this for it’s lead over the much funnier ‘Friday After Next’, which itself is not as funny as the original ‘Friday’ which is my all time fave movie bout the ‘hood!

Note to Nine re Battlefronts – its not them, its you. Please forward the same note to Ten re Top Model. Both 6.30 shows cost their 7.30 followers big time, in the order of roughly 100-200,000 viewers week on week.

Viewers still can’t get enough of this fly on the wall BS and so Seven raked in the rewards at 6.30 and 7pm and tool the 7.30 hour just for good measure.

I don’t even think Battlefronts itself is the problem – I just think viewers are savvy enough to spot a dead duck when they see it – here’s a show that’s on for four weeks before being mysteriously yanked and suddenly resurfaces in summer. They average Joe may not read MediaSpy or TV Tonight but they’re smart enough to recognise a turd when it float to the surface, why bother to be interested in a show that’s likely to be gone in a few weeks, sorry Nine this goose is cooked.

As for Top Model – here’s what I like to call the import paradox and you read it here first…

Rule 1. In the United States as broadcast networks rapidly lose audience share to cable, more and more high quality series are being made for cable networks.

Rule 2. Nothing originating from any US cable outlet will ever achieve widespread mainstream success in Australia.

Rule 3. In reference to the above rules, please note that the CW enjoys an audience share comparable to a US cable network.

So there you go, Next Top Model is a dead horse, ten need to stop beating it. The last CW (or UPN, WB) series to achieve any success here was Supernatural which has been diminishing in viewers for several years now, I can’t think of any cable series that has achieved success with Australian auds except for the brief fling with Californication, once on 9.30 Mondays with 1 million viewers now languishing on late night Sundays with only 332,000

The list of US Cable dramatic series which have been successful in their homeland reads like a who’s who of Australian failures:
The Shield (FX): very quickly banished to 10.30 Saturdays
Nip/Tuck (FX): Brief success and summer series but eventually yanked, now Foxtel has first dibs
Battlestar Galactica (SciFi): a spark of hope with the mini-series but the regular season quickly flamed out on Wednesdays, second season didn’t even bow on the network
The 4400 (USA): First Season of 5 episode condensed over two nights and sold to Aussie viewers as a Mini Series had the goods, the second season was a complete bust.
Monk (USA): They have tried this again and again to no avail.
Burn Notice (USA): Vocal fans have kept this on the air and no doubt there’ll be another tryout in 2009 – it’s a good show but the general public don’t seem interested.
Psych (USA): Very quickly retired to TenHD.
The Larry Sanders Show (HBO): Remember the hype surrounding this in 1995, every TV journalist and their dog was salivating over this series complete with all the swearing coming to prime time, it had a very short prime time run
Dream On (Showtime): From the people who would go on to create Friends, this was one of the few US sitcoms with frequent nudity – Ten chose to screen the sanitized version – ‘nuff said!

And the mini-networks…
Star Trek Voyager (UPN): By today’s standards would be a massive hit – but Nine very quickly booted it to 11pm – except in Perth where it fared well against the competition and remained in prime time for a while longer.
The Sentinel (UPN): instant 10.30 status for this UPN action hour
Girlfriends (UPN): Was an early morning mainstay for Nine several years back
Reba (The WB): Foxtel absolutely loved this sitcom which was shunted to daytime on Seven
Grounded for Life (The WB): Ditto
Everybody Hates Chris (UPN/CW): Let me just say Everybody hates David Mott because this could still work dammit!
Felicity (The WB): One good summer does not a series make…
Smallville (The WB): Ten put in a superhuman effort to resurrect the man of steel from Nine’s scrap heap and they even got him to 1 million viewers – then did what every dumb network would do and switch timeslots midseason rendering the whole exercise pointless, first run right now sit with Fox8.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (The WB): They barely tried, slotting it on Fridays before retreating to 10.30 – after a while it became the hottest show out of prime time.
90210 (CW): This year’s saddest case a show which had everything going for it except it’s US network which ensured it wouldn’t be watched on these shores.
Reaper (CW): See above although even worse because seven have promoted this show and simply not bothered to make good on their promotion – it still sits on the shelf gathering dust.
Gary & Mike (UPN): this claymation series was the original ‘Reaper’, heavily promoted by ten in 1999 only to never surface.
Do Over (UPN): As I recall this time travelling sitcom did alright in Australia but was done in by US audiences.

The Kids are Alright - Friday 12 December 2008

Credit where credit is due, Seven knows how to program effectively. Holding off the premiere of Madagascar until summer might seem bizarre, but it was perfectly timed to take advantage of the sequel’s theatre release. Clearly big family movies are an important draw on Friday nights as has been proven in recent weeks with the Harry Potter series and Ten’s Nanny McPhee.

If this proves anything it’s that now more than ever you have to program to the audience available. Using Fridays to burn off adult films is no longer a good option. During the year the older audience has been split up all over the place with only the ABC (by virtue of having regular series after 8.30) commanding a consistent audience on the night.

To Ten’s credit they have decided to hedge their bets, Family hour for kids, post 8.30 with Crime Dramas. It will take some time for the young skewing ten to attract some older viewers on this night but it’s a worthy experiment and we’ll keep checking back here to see how it goes.

Better for Ten was the performance of The Simpsons which is pulling a better number in that slot than anything since the demise of Friday Night Games. Perhaps Ten should give this hour over to it's animated comedies and not bother experimenting with niche cable formats in the future.

Nine was the flunky of the night with appalling turn-out for Australian Geographic, you know it’s bad when you could be beaten by Ice Road Truckers. One wonder whether it will be in the schedule next week. Their choice of Movie, The Last Samurai, was unsuited to Friday night – back to the drawing board guys.

Law & Order: Interchange Bench - Thursday 11 December 2008

A very good Thursday for all networks with the numbers very even across primetime. After 7.30 Nine seemed to fare the best with older skewing original programming.

Cold Case continues to be the most popular series on Thursday nights. Having said that it’s also the series that lost the most viewers week on week with 100,000 deserters, The Closer had 60,000 folks bail. This kind of precipitation can be expected in December, but the other network’s shows stayed pretty even week on week.

Now onto one of the more baffling network moves, what is channel Ten doing? They got scared that CI took a beating from Cold Case so they did they swap-a-roo with SVU.

Last week Criminal Intent at 8.30 got 742,000 viewers, this week SVU at 9.30 got 745,000 viewers – a 3K gain.

Last week SVU at 9.30 got 829,000 viewers versus CI this week getting 821,000 so they lost 8K, that’s a net loss week on week of 5,000 viewers for their trouble.

Law & Order is so interchangeable it doesn’t seem to matter to viewers which show is where – they’ll tune in if nothing better is on, hence why the 9.30 hour with less competition (Reality and a US Cable Drama) is stronger than an 8.30 hour against two first run US Dramas.

Let’s get specific – Wednesday 10 December 2008

At this time of year the viewing figures are so low it’s difficult to read anything into the numbers, however Nine would be encouraged to stick with CSI Miami in this slot next year.

The reason it’s rating so well at the moment probably has a great deal to do with the amount of moving it’s done in the past two years. In 2007 and 2008 this show was all over the map, even having split broadcasts with Melbourne viewers getting the show in lieu of the banned Underbelly.

It was a solid performer in Melbourne at that time as well it should be noted, although it was being beaten by House which is now floundering even with less competition.

It’s a good bet that Ten will stick Rush at 8.30 Wednesdays at some point in the new year, whatever ratings it’s garnering in it’s quick turnaround are obviously too embarrassing or depressing for anyone to put in print at the moment, so it’s likely that unless Ten can find a way to sell the show to a bigger audience then it’s natural level would be approx 800,000 - 1 million folks.

How I Met Your Mother is starting to become the dominant commercial player at 7pm which some people will put down to the better lead in but I give viewers more credit than that – last night while watching Heroes I spied two separate promos for How I Met Your Mother, neither of them was generic, they were in fact episode based.

Seven is spending money and time putting together promos for a strip sitcom, something ten should seriously consider, all ten has to do is pick a 10 second moment out of that night’s episode of Friends and pump it at daytime and late night and viewers will eventually be drawn to the show – just showing the same generic promo over and over is useless – you may as well just go back to voice-overs over the end credits if you think it makes any difference.

Generic promos just let people know that shows are on, they are solely for the benefit of folks who would watch the show anyway – they do nothing whatsoever to attract new viewers to a show – that’s when episode-specific promos are needed.

Right now Seven is doing a better job of this than anyone, when you’re number 3, teetering on the edge of number 4 you should look at your market leaders and learn from their success.

Star system holding television back

As has been widely reported this week alleged funnyman Trevor Marmalade was dropped from Nine's footy show.

This morning on 3AW Peter Ford reported that the reason for the departure was over Salary. According to Ford, Nine had told Marmalade that they would only have him back if he took a pay cut down from 300K to 150K, it was a take it or leave it deal and Marmalade apparently left it.

Now I'm no financial whiz, but if they were paying him $300,000pa to tell 3 jokes a week on a show that only plays on one of Nine's O&Os (and 4 affiliates) representing less than half of the total Australian aud, they're weren't exactly getting their money's worth were they?

I’d want some more bang for my buck – truth be told. One of the things that seems to be broken with the TV business model is the idea of star salaries. This is where people are kept on the company payroll and yet there’s no role for them.

It’s very reminiscent of the whole Hollywood Star System where studios would employ actors on a full time basis and assign them to their movies as they see fit.

Old time movie buffs will wax nostalgic about this closed shop but really in terms of finding the best people for your movie it was holding the whole system back. You only have to compare the vanilla films of the studio era to the more memorable films of the 60’s, 70’s and beyond and you’ll see that while it may maintain a competitive advantage for the biggest player, it often locks out good new talent and keeps talented people away from the movies that would suit them.

So it is with television.

The most glaring example of this is Eddie McGuire, what has he actually done this year? Has been on TV? I think he hosted ACA at one point. Could anybody have imagined years ago that McGuire could host ACA? I couldn’t, it seems bizarre but there he was for a week earlier this year.

How come, well because he’s getting paid anyway, so they may as well have him do something. This is just weird, surely you wouldn’t run a business like this.

McGuire’s stock in trade is AFL and Game Shows, Game Shows are all but extinct after a surge in the early part of this decade and Nine not only doesn’t have the rights to AFL but it’s Melbourne Footy Show has had an all new team in place for two years since McGuire made the improbable leap to ring-in CEO.

While Nine’s problems with having so many faded stars on the payroll have been biting them over the past two years, Seven has been amassing a huge employee base of it’s own, poaching people left right and centre from the other networks.

They’ve been doing it since 2004 when they lured Ian Ross (Rosco) from Seven and Ian Dickson (Dicko) from Ten, and ever since then have been coaxing folks from the other three nets with alarming regularity.

Having all these people on the payroll is great when you’re riding high, suddenly your network becomes a destination for viewers to see their favourite stars or newsreaders, Nine used to be like this – in the 90’s but slowly bit by bit the wheels come off the star factory and you’re stuck with highly paid people being warehoused, or twiddling their thumbs after their shows have been cancelled.

We then get the embarrassing situation where the network starts trying to come up with ‘star vehicles’, Seven has already experienced this with Dicko lurching the poor man (well not that poor really) from flop to flop in a vain attempt to fit a round peg into a square hole. Nine did it with Bert Newton, kicking Bud Tingwell off 20 to 01 and giving it over to Bert. All this year they’ve scratching around for something for Eddie to do, too afraid to cut him loose and yet the vehicle is just not there.

Eventually this will happen to Seven when their current crop ages or viewers move on and they’ll find themselves in much the same strife that Nine is in now, it’s in their DNA – you see in the past 5 years Seven has become Nine.

What does this have to do with Marmalade, well its just a small example of some of the misplaced capital invested at Nine over the years and I’m hopeful for their sake that they take a long hard look at their star system.

Making entertaining shows for viewers should be the priority, not making shows solely to occupy their talent.

Late night suprise - Tuesday 9 December 2008

Nine pulled a swifty last night and for one hour became channel seven. A new show, Sudden Impact, which is another one of these car crash doco-soaps and the return of NZ sitcom Police 10-7 did the business in the opening hour.

What’s more astonishing is that ‘tis the season for surprise hit rerun movies with Mr & Mrs Smith not too shabby for the next 2 and a half hours, the icing on the cake was Survivor which was bumped back to 11pm but still commanded a huge aud for that time period, generally after 11 shows are lucky to exceed 300,000 (unless they started earlier or are live sport) so that’s an outstanding figure.

Surely Nine will be emboldened to try out Survivor again in Prime Time especially with an extra season up their sleeves meaning they could potentially show it year round without a break.

Seven seem stuck in 3rd gear in the early evening, Ghost Whisperer did better than Dirty Sexy Money which was hurtled back to 11.30 for it’s long limp off the screen, but Nine’s movie, In Plain Sight and the incompatibility of Ghost Whisperer all combined to give Prison Break a headache down 63,000 week on week.

NCIS was again the best Prime Time series on the night but this audience didn’t carry over for the 2 hour premiere of In Plain Sight with the audience almost halving – even taking into account the drop as the night wears on that’s still a bad result.

Almost as bad was the shocking performance of Rules of Engagement, losing to a show in it’s death throes (Ugly Betty) is a bad thing on any occasion, but losing 135,000 from a compatible lead in is just tragic. Having said that The Big Bang Theory experienced a similar drop from it’s lead-in on Monday (816,000 vs 1,018,000 for Mr Sheen) but still – nobody needs under 700,000 viewers at 7.30, even at this time of year.